Andrew Warshaw Archives - Page 7 of 12 - Inside World Football

Andrew Warshaw: Timing, protocol and the bigger Winter 2022 picture

Let’s put things into perspective. Whilst no-one would deny that Jerome Valcke’s off-the-cuff remarks over a winter World Cup in Qatar were untimely in the extreme, was Sepp Blatter’s right-hand man really telling us anything we didn’t know already?

Stakeholders throughout the game have understandably cried foul at Valcke seemingly jumping the gun before the time frame for global consultation is anywhere near complete.

Insideworldfootball has learned, for example, that the Qatar organisers received more concerned calls over this particular 2022 story that at any time in last two years –

Andrew Warshaw: Mickey Mouse? He would have killed to win the FA Cup

Driving back from an English FA Cup game in the pouring rain last Saturday, I was listening to a radio phone-in and suddenly became so incensed by a Chelsea-supporting caller, I gripped the steering wheel even more tightly in the treacherous conditions to avoid swerving into the path of another car in my rage.

The caller, displaying an arrogance so common among Johnny-come-lately fans whose clubs have enjoyed unlimited success and who disregard everyone else,

Andrew Warshaw: The Sack Race is on but are there really any winners?

It’s a familiar jibe at almost every game whenever a manager is under pressure to save his job. “Sacked in the morning, you’re getting sacked in the morning,” goes the refrain, belted out with gusto by fans of the opposing team as they taunt the manager in question.

The chant has become part of the fabric of the game in English football and it is around this time of year – in other words close to the mid-season transfer window –

Andrew Warshaw: The greatest betrayal of all

Next time you go and watch your local team and you see a totally unnecessary foul or an unexplained provocation leading to a red or yellow card, it might not be because of a rush of blood to the head by the player involved.

Likewise next time you see a crazy penalty or some other ridiculous refereeing decision, it might not be because of genuine if irritating human error.

Andrew Warshaw: Qatar’s Belounis case is raising questions and damaging reputation

The plight of journeyman footballer Zahir Belounis and his desperate appeal to be paid what he’s owed and leave Qatar could hardly have come at a more inopportune time for the 2022 World Cup organisers.

Just as the Qataris were proudly unveiling details of the design and construction for the first of their state-of-the-art stadia for the finals in nine years’ time, so all the pomp and backslapping co-incided with yet more adverse publicity about a case which human rights organisations are using as an example of the restrictive kafala employment system that prevents foreign workers leaving the country until being “released”

Andrew Warshaw: A tricky day for 2014 public relations, but the tickets are selling even if the security stories aren’t

Whoever is being economical with the truth about the reasons for the Soccerex global football convention in Rio being cancelled, the news was timed with a shambolic attempt at promoting Brazil’s World Cup. What started out as a good idea and looked like smart timing for a push to get people to travel to the 2014 party, rapidly went downhill.

When Thierry Weil, FIFA’s marketing director, and Ricardo Trade, head of the local organising committee,

Andrew Warshaw: Uncomfortable games in high places

Amidst all the rhetoric in recent days from FIFA and UEFA over the separate issues of racism and World Cup slots, the bigger picture seems to be one of canny manoeuvrings being played out in front of the world’s media by Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini in order to gain the moral high ground.

“Anything you can do, I can do better” appears to be the basis of the rather silly (at best uncomfortable) mind games being employed by the respective presidents of football’s two main governing bodies.

Andrew Warshaw: More questions than answers in the long ball game

As an autumnal evening sunlight settled over FIFA House in Zurich last Friday and a phalanx of cameramen packed away their equipment after a somewhat anti-climactic Sepp Blatter press conference that focussed almost entirely on Qatar, I found myself humming the lyrics to that 1970s hit, More Questions Than Answers, by Johnny Nash.

Two generations after it was released, I reasoned, one could quite easily apply the title of the reggae ditty to the position we are still in as far as the 2022 World Cup saga is concerned.

Andrew Warshaw: Eerie calm before the desert storm

Whatever transpires at the eagerly awaited gathering of FIFA’s top brass in Zurich on Friday, any decision to switch the 2022 World Cup in Qatar from the searing heat of the Gulf summer has suddenly taken on additional intrigue following the revelation that FIFA’s chief corruption-buster is stepping up his investigation into the entire bid process for 2018 and 2022 to find out what, if any, illegal shenanigans took place.

FIFA’s executive committee,

Andrew Warshaw: They call themselves Yids and they’re proud of it

Sometimes in football, as in other walks of life, a debate splits public opinion so far down the middle that it seems impossible to reconcile the two sides of the argument.

For once I am not talking about the Qatar 2022 World Cup but a highly complex domestic issue in England that is generating emotion-packed comment and opinion.

Anyone who has suffered from anti-semitism knows how vile, pernicious and hurtful the insults and alienation can be.

Andrew Warshaw: Forget the legals, it’s staying put, but May change?

Ever since FIFA president Sepp Blatter’s exclusive interview with this website explaining his preference for switching the 2022 Qatar World Cup to winter, time has hardly stopped still over the issue.

Everyone, it seems, is having their say and whilst many stakeholders have expressed intelligent, sensible, well-argued points, many other so-called experts have been jumping on the bandwagon for no other reason than to cynically question Qatar’s right to host the event.

Let’s make a few things clear,

Andrew Warshaw: Breakfast with Platini, Qatar 2022, but don’t mention the FIFA presidency

Breakfast with Michel Platini is an annual media gathering on the fringes of the Champions League draw in Monaco that has become almost de rigueur for anyone trying to get inside the head of the UEFA president.

Informal and charmingly mischievous, you invariably get him in an engaging, outgoing mood – in a variety of languages – away from all those official functions and formalities.

Yet among the nods, winks, innuendos and wise-cracking,

Andrew Warshaw: Qatar 2022 – A third option

It is only an idea at this stage but one which perhaps might work and should be considered.

For the last few months, seemingly everyone involved in football politics has had their say over whether the 2022 Qatar World Cup should be staged in summer or winter.

The latest voice to be heard on the issue is that of Harold Mayne-Nicholls, the FIFA-appointed expert whose inspection team went round the world in the build-up to the December 2010,

Andrew Warshaw: Qatar 2022 – Winter Rules apply

So now we finally know where we stand on the 2022 World Cup. More importantly, so does Qatar.

Six months ago, I wrote that every time FIFA was asked whether it would sanction a winter tournament, it gave the same answer: only if Qatar, as host nation, officially requested it. I also wrote that every time you posed the same question to the Qataris, you also got the same answer: only if they were formally asked to switch by FIFA.

Andrew Warshaw: Fulham, the latest club to fall into American hands

What do Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Aston Villa, Sunderland and Fulham have in common? Okay, they are all members of English Premier League but that’s not the answer I’m looking for.

The answer I’m looking for is they are also now controlled by American owners or majority shareholders, Fulham being the latest to join that particular ‘club’ for a reported £200m.

Not so long ago, the notion that almost a third of top-flight English clubs would be in American hands 13 years into the new millennium would have been dismissed as fanciful given the fact that professional football,